


An Open Mind

by MoldyMoo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-01 20:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13303032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoldyMoo/pseuds/MoldyMoo
Summary: The Doctor left the half human half time lord Doctor and Rose on a beach. But the new Doctor is still connected to the original Doctor on the other side of the void. He sees things, dreams when he sleeps. He sees the Doctor continuing his adventures in the TARDIS. But as time goes on, the dreams start leaving their mark on this new, human Doctor and Rose worries he'll be ripped from her once again...





	1. Pandorica Part 1

_“Rose.” The girl in question didn’t turn away from where the TARDIS had disappeared on the beach. She merely squeezed the Doctor’s hand tighter in acknowledgement. The Doctor leaned down closer to her and whispered, “I’m still here. You still have_ me _.”_

_Without a word, Rose finally turned to face the doctor and studied him for a minute. He felt some sort of way about it—anxious? Nervous? Worried? She had on that face—the same one she had when he’d regenerated right in front of her—she was studying him, he knew. Looking for some sign that he was a fake, a copy._

_But she found none. And with bone-crushing force, she threw herself at the man and grabbed onto him, for fear he’d disappear, too._

The Doctor rolled over and ran a hand down his face, yawning. Another fitful night of dreaming. At least this time the dreams were things that had happened to _him_ , and not the other Doctor. He rolled onto his back and glanced over at the other side of the bed—empty.

He sat up and ran a hand through his hair just as Rose walked into the bedroom, hair damp and cheeks flushed from a shower. She offered up a smile, threw her towel over the back of the small desk chair, and sat down on the edge of the bed. 

“Sleep well?” He didn’t answer and she sighed. “There’s gotta be something we can do.”

“There isn’t,” he told her softly.

She stood, suddenly, and grabbed her phone off the nightstand next to the bed. “You can’t live like this,” she muttered angrily with a shrug, as if it was so simple. As if he could just… _stop_.

“I didn’t sleep much,” he started. He knew this was a losing argument—they’d been through this endless circle of an argument before, but there were things about himself—hundreds and hundreds of years of things—that he had yet to admit to Rose.

“I know,” Rose murmured distracted by her phone.

The Doctor let out a puff of air and stood, grabbing Rose’s hands in their frantic assault on the keys. “I didn’t sleep much,” he repeated, she looked up at him curiously. “On the TARDIS.”

“Alright,” she said slowly, closing her phone, “I’ll bite.”

“When I was traveling on the TARDIS—the other me, that is—I didn’t sleep much. Didn’t need to. Sleep is such a human thing—recovering from a mere 24 hours,” he scoffed. He pushed away from Rose and dashed about the room as he would have in the console room of the TARDIS, pulling on various clothing.

“So how much sleep does a Time Lord need?” Rose prompted.

“Welllll,” he began, pants around his waist but unbuttoned, fingers frozen. “Coupla hours every so often—wellll—when I say _coupla hours_ —”

Rose raised an eyebrow at him and he immediately finished buttoning his jeans and pulled a t-shirt over his head. When he was finished dressing, he jammed his hands in his pockets and looked at her. The sudden seriousness to his demeanor worried Rose.

“Doctor,” she said softly, reaching down and pulling his hands out of his pockets so that she could wrap his arms around her.

“If you think the dreams are bad now.” He let out a humorless laugh. “I used to see all kinds of things. I guess the human in me tones them down a bit.”

“What kind of things?”

“Guilt,” he said simply. “People I couldn’t help. People whose lives I’ve ruined because of my incessant need to show off.”

“Lives you’ve—what?”

But the Doctor didn’t elaborate. Instead he gave her a quick kiss and placed her phone back in her hands. “You’ll be late to Torchwood if you don’t hurry.”

She paused as he walked to the other side of the bed, messing with something in his own little nightstand. “What did you dream about last night?”

He looked up, surprised. Not that she hadn’t always asked what he’d been bothered by at night, but her curious tone caught something in his attention. “It was a memory. One of my own.”

“Oh?”

He shut the drawer he was in and stood. “From Bad Wolf Bay. When the Doctor left and it was just you and me.”

“And that made you restless?” she mumbled, not sure how to take that.

“No, no, no,” he quickly relented. “It’s just…not…I’ve had better memories since then.”

She paused and narrowed her eyes at him, looking for his telltale signs of lying. Finding none she gave a little smile and headed for the door.

“You can always come with—” she began to call over her shoulder.

“I’ve had enough of Torchwood, if you _don’t_ mind,” he called back. She waited until she heard the faint click of the front door to their apartment before he turned and leaned against the wall in thought.

Rose was right about one thing. He couldn’t keep living like this. Going to bed tired and waking up exhausted, only resting during short, odd naps while Rose was working at Torchwood. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands and slid to the floor.

When did the dreams even start?


	2. Pandorica Part 2

The first time it happened was probably the worst. And not just because neither he nor Rose were prepared. It was three days after they’d gotten back from Bad Wolf Bay…

Jackie and Rose had been staying with Pete in that big house of his, which had been rebuilt since the Cybermen incident. Rose had a small, separate apartment closer to Torchwood, but tended to only stay there when she had long shifts. Jackie and Pete offered to let Rose and the Doctor stay with them—they had plenty of spare rooms, even with Tony as the new addition. But seeing as how she wasn’t alone anymore, Rose figured it was about time she stopped living with her mother. 

The first night or two had been awkward to say the least. The first night, the Doctor hadn’t slept—he claimed he wasn’t used to it. The second night he had passed out in Rose’s bed. She didn’t argue with that.

The third night, he saw things.

A man stood in a class case. 

“I’ve lived too long…”

The Doctor approached the other case as the man screamed and pleaded with him to stop, to leave him there, that he wasn’t worth it. But the Doctor knew—no one was ever not worth it. A single life could change the whole world. He’d seen it.

He stopped at the door to the other case and looked towards the elderly man. “Wilfred, it’s my honor. Better be quick.” He jerked the door open and quickly stepped inside, sealing himself in. “Three, two one…” The button was pressed and the Doctor immediately curled into himself, his body absorbing the radiation in waves.

Rose woke with a start as a noise alerted her to the problem. The screams cut off and shifted to muffled groans next to her. She cut the bedside lamp on and immediately identified the source.

“Doctor?” she said, nudging his shoulder. He had pulled the blankets up over his head. She jerked them down, the sight beneath waking her up completely. “Doctor!” He was writhing in pain, covered in sweat, and grimacing in his sleep.

“Doctor, wake up!” she demanded. His forehead was hot and he was gasping for air. As soon as it started, though, it was over. “Doct—”

He shot up in bed, still gasping for air, but he was awake. He looked down at himself, hand over his frantic—but still beating—heart. “Still alive, then,” he breathed. A small noise drew his attention to Rose. “What?”

“’What’? Are you serious?” She shifted so that she was a little more comfortable, legs crossed beneath her. “That was one hell of a dream you were havin’. Are you feeling alright? I think you got a fever.” She went to check his head again, but it was no longer as hot as it was before.

“I don’t think that was a dream,” he muttered, standing up and pulling on a robe before jerking the door open and storming out into the hallway.

“Whattya mean that wasn’t a dream?” Rose demanded, following after him. He stood in the middle of their small kitchen, all the lights on, staring at his hands. “Doctor, what is going on?”

Before he could answer, though, he collapsed to his knees, a guttural groan escaping his lips. Rose leapt into action and helped him to his feet and over to the couch.

“It’s started,” he muttered.

“What? What’s started?” Rose demanded, sitting next to him. She took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. 

“The Doctor—the other Doctor—it’s started,” he told her gently. “He’s regenerating.”

Fear turned Rose’s blood to ice at his words. She knew what that meant. He’d told her when he’d done it before. It was a defense—when Time Lords were dying, every cell in their bodies changed. The other Doctor was dying. 

“How do you know?” she asked him. “How do you know? It’s just a dream, it doesn’t mean anything—”

“I know because it’s not a dream, Rose. It’s real and it’s happening.” He took Rose’s hands in his.

“What’ll happen to you?” 

He stood and pulled her up with a small smile. “Come on then, let’s get back to bed.”

“Doctor,” Rose repeated, barely letting him lead her back to their room, “What’ll happen to you?”

“I’ll probably be fine,” he murmured, turning back to their room. “Now, it’s two in the morning and way past your bed time, Rose Tyler.” She went without argument, but knew that this conversation—this whole situation, actually—was far from over.

And she was right. The Doctor lay in bed for an hour or two after they’d returned to their room. Rose had almost immediately fallen back to sleep, his hand entwined with hers beneath the blankets.

The sun had just begun to light the room when he finally drifted off. 

He was visiting all of his past companions. Martha and Mickey, Sarah Jane and her son, Jack and Alonso, Martha and her new husband, Wilf and his daughter. Everyone seemed to have someone. A companion. 

Then there was Rose. She would always have someone, he knew. But he couldn’t visit the Rose that knew him.

“Doctor,” Rose murmured, trying to nudge him out of his fitful sleep. “Doctor, please wake up.”

His eyes finally fluttered back and he looked up at his companion. His Rose.

“Still dreaming?” she asked, standing and straightening her side of the bed. She’d already showered and dressed.

“Yeah,” he grunted, sitting up. His head was killing him. He glanced at the clock and quickly did the math in his head. Four hours and the other Doctor had managed to visit most of his companions. “He was visiting everyone.”

“Who?” Rose asked, sitting down on top of the blankets. She was dressed in a t-shirt and sweatpants.

“Aren’t you going to be late for work?” he asked, eyebrows pulling together. He might not work there, but he was sure the dress code was not that lax. 

“I’m not going in today. I’m taking a sick day.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her and took her in—complexion was fine, eyes were fine, sounded fine. “But you’re not sick.”

She raised her eyebrows and smirked at him. “I’m not…” It clicked, then, and he looked up. “It’s just for today,” she amended. “I just want to make sure you’re alright.” She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt—which was actually his shirt, he now realized. “I just got you back, I don’t want…”

He took her hand in his. “He visited you, too. Do you remember?”

“What?”

“Think back. New Years day. There was a drunk on the side of the road. Asked you the date. Ring any bells?” She studied him with an alarmed look. “2005, January the first. He told you, ‘tell you what’—”

“I bet you’re gonna have a really great year,” Rose finished in a whisper. “I remember. I didn’t know—he—”

“Calm down,” the Doctor chuckled. “It’s alright.” But as soon as the words left his mouth, a grunt followed shortly after and he doubled over into the bed.

“Doctor?” Rose hovered over him, trying to uncurl him from the ball he was in. “Doctor, come on, listen to me. It’s not real.”

“You don’t believe that,” he ground out.

“No,” she agreed, voice shaking, “but it’s going to be ok. Because I’m right here. Tell me what to do—how can I help?” He jerked and she tilted his face up to look at her. His eyes were unfocused and his forehead was impossibly hot again. She tried her best to get him to lean back and lie down. He let out a fierce cry of pain and pushed down into the mattress.

“What do I do?” she whispered to herself. She was completely helpless. Everything that was happening was in his head—she didn’t even know what he was seeing. She grabbed his wrist and checked his pulse. Despite the rapid breathing, it was slow. “Doctor?” He was no longer conscious.

The broken and dying man managed to claw his way back to the TARDIS. He shed his coat and draped it over one of the pillars and made his way to the center console. Inspecting his hand and the golden light coming from it, he knew in the bottom of his heart that it was time. His time. 

But why? He’d done so much as this incarnation. There was still so much he wanted to see, wanted to do. He wasn’t ready. He’d had so much fun as the tenth Doctor.

The regeneration had already begun. He’d already stalled once before. This time there was no going back.

He stumbled up to the console and flipped a switch. The TARDIS jumped to life, the pipes singing their familiar song as they began to move through space and time. 

“I don’t wanna go.”

Rose’s attention snapped back to the bed, where the Doctor was talking in his sleep.

“The glowing intensified until it was all he was. The sudden explosion of power erupted from his body, igniting the walls of the TARDIS. And then, everything, every cell of his body changed. And he was no more. He was…someone else. He was still the Doctor, but his body was different, foreign. 

And the TARDIS was crashing. 

Rose watched as the Doctor finally seemed to settle and sleep peacefully. An hour later and his fever seemed to have vanished completely. She made him some tea and settled back into the desk to work on some things she’d brought home from Torchwood.

It was nearly three in the afternoon when he finally seemed to wake up.

“You feeling better?” she asked as he sat up cautiously, taking the tea that she was offering him. 

“He regenerated,” he said simply before chugging the now-room-temperature tea.

“So…” Rose prompted, taking the empty cup from him and setting it aside on the nightstand. 

“So I think it’s over,” he said with a grin. “Over. Done. Last I saw he landed the TARDIS. Welll—when I say landed I mean crashed. Welll—when I said crashed I mean destroyed. Flames. Completely trashed the interior. Gonna take a while to repair it. He landed in the swimming pool, so I think he’s doing fine, though.”

“And you’re ok?”

The Doctor was fully aware just how worried Rose had been about him. And here she was, asking about his wellbeing when the “real” Doctor had just nearly died and destroyed the TARDIS during a regeneration. In a spur of energy, he leaned over and kissed her, then stood up and started digging through his drawers full of new clothes, picking out something to wear for whatever was left of the day.

He glanced at the clock. “Let’s go out for a late lunch. Or early dinner, if you’d prefer.”

She grinned up at him from the bed. “Alright.”

But that was only the beginning. The first of many dreams.


	3. Pandorica Part 3

It had been nearly three weeks since the dreams had started. Rose had been writing down every dream since then. He’d had a new one almost every night since then. When the Doctor had found her little journal of his dreams he had taken over, telling her he could be more descriptive since he was the one living vicariously through the eyes of the other Doctor.

“So what was last night?” Rose asked during dinner one night.

“Something’s wrong. The Doctor’s in trouble,” he muttered around a mouthful of food.

“Isn’t he always?” Rose asked with a chuckled and a signature grin. But the Doctor didn’t return the smile. She studied his expression for a minute while he ate. “You’re worried.”

“River Song defaced a historical rock just to get the Doctor’s attention. And the Pandorica kept coming up. I don’t know, it was a dream—choppy and I barely remember half of it now.”

“River Song? Pandorica?”

“River Song is his—uhm—close…friend,” he tried to explain. “It’s complicated. But the Pandorica—that’s what’s got me worried.”

“Why?” Rose asked. “What’s the Pandorica?”

“A prison. A box that was made to hold the most powerful, feared thing in the entire universe. The Pandorica is a myth. A fairytale,” the Doctor explained, throwing his plate in the sink and retrieving his little dream journal. 

“Think there’s connections in other dreams?” Rose asked. The Doctor slid his chair around the table so that he was next to her and she could look through the journal with him.

“More than that. Right before I woke up this morning, they saw the Pandorica.”

“So it’s not a myth,” Rose clarified.

“Right,” the Doctor nodded. “There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior—a nameless, terrible thing soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it or hold it or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down the whole world. It ended up in there because—you know fairytales. A good wizard tricked it.”

“So what’s inside?” Rose asked, but got no answer. He just flipped through the pages of his book.

“Everyone else seemed to know what the Pandorica is so—why don’t I know?”

Rose froze the Doctor’s frantic fingers with her touch. “Calm down—even if you did know you couldn’t possibly help. We’re here and they’re there.”

“You don’t understand, Rose.”

“Then tell me so that I will,” she told him as gently as she could.

“The last thing I saw before I woke—the very last thing, was every enemy I’ve ever had. Every single fleet—Daleks, Cybermen, Slitheen, you name them they were in the sky just waiting for the Pandorica to open.”

“But why?” Rose asked uselessly. She took the book from him and began to flip through herself. “Okay, every odd end from every dream. The first dream after the regeneration—”

“The crack in the wall,” he said for her.

“The second dream, about the whale thing?” she asked, finding the pages for it.

But he shook his head. “Don’t think there was anything in that one. The next one was the Dalek one, right?”

“Yeah. Nothing there, either.”

“The one after that—you know, I’ve never heard of this one—”

The Doctor dove to flip the pages. “Nothing, nothing. Just Weeping Angels.” He began to flip past it when something caught his eye and he stopped. “But at the end—the crack in the wall. It was bigger, much bigger. All the Weeping Angels fell into the crack. He said ‘The crack is gone but the explosion that caused it is still happening. Somewhere out there in time.’ And then River Song said she’s see him again when the Pandorica opens.”

Rose smirked. “River Song. That’s why I’ve never been told of this dream. Well, an explosion causes the crack—isn’t there a dream later…” She pulled the book closer and began to search. “Here.” She pushed the book in front of him. “The Doctor reached into the crack and pulled out a piece of the TARDIS.”

The pieces were slowly coming together to form a partial picture. “And in my dream this morning River handed him a Van Gogh painting—the TARDIS exploding. So the TARDIS is exploding at every point in time, but why?” He jumped up and began to pace around their small kitchen.

Rose leaned back in her chair and watching him think for a second. She could almost see the gears in his head going a million miles an hour. “That’s not a question for you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked her, confused and slightly annoyed.

“That’s a question for the Doctor to answer.”

“I am the Doctor.”

“Not what I meant,” she sighed. “You know that. There’s a different question that you have to answer.”

He stopped pacing and eyed her, crossing his arms. “Alright, Rose Tyler. What question is it that I have to answer?”

“Why are you still connected to the Doctor when everything was sealed off finally?”

The Doctor just stared at her, watching her try to hide the smug look on her face. He didn’t know. He didn’t even know where to begin to answer that. Nothing. He had nothing about that answer. He hadn’t even tried.

He was too busy with another problem. When the Doctor got hurt in these dreams, he felt it. All of it. Every cut, scrape, and bruise. There was never any scratch when he woke, but it felt so real. He would ache for hours after he woke.

What would happen if the Doctor got seriously hurt—or worse?

“It doesn’t need to be answered right now,” Rose murmured, standing up and taking his hands. “You’re brilliant and I know you’ll figure it out eventually. I just want you to be able to live a normal life here. I don’t—I don’t want…”

“Want what?” he prompted in a whisper, his face dangerously close to hers.

“I don’t want you to hate it here with me,” she whispered back. “You’ve only got one life.”

“And I fully intend to spend it with you,” he breathed before capturing her lips with his own.


	4. Pandorica Part 4

Why? Why were they still connected? The universes were supposed to be parallel—never touching. So why? The Doctor ran a hand down his face, frustrated. There had to be some part of the hole left unclosed. 

But then that begged the question, how did it survive? And then, how would he go about closing it? The other Doctor had left him a piece of TARDIS, but it would still take quite a long time before it would become a working TARDIS.

“Go to sleep, Doctor,” Rose muttered from the other side of t he bed. 

He looked down at her with an eyebrow raised. “I am,” he whispered back, daring to run a hand through her hair.

She sighed and propped herself up on her elbows. “Seriously. It’s harmful for humans to avoid sleep.”

He gave her a small smile she probably couldn’t see in the dark. He knew what would happen if he fell asleep. He knew something big was going to happen. Something huge, and dangerous, and if the Doctor didn’t make it out of it alive this time, he was afraid it would kill him, too.

“You’ll be fine,” Rose mumbled, as if reading his mind. She fell back down into her pillow. “I’ll slap you awake if something happens.”

“I don’t doubt you would,” he replied flatly, lying down himself. Putting his trust in Rose’s ability to notice something wrong, if anything did go wrong, he allowed himself to drift off, if only for a short bit. Sleep might even help his brain functionality. He might be able to figure things out if he was able to rest for a minute or two.

“Does it ever bother you, Amy, that your life doesn’t make sense?” The Doctor asked the red head. Before she could answer, shots were fired. The two ducked around the Pandorica and out of the range of fire.

“What was that?” Amy demanded.

“I need a proper look,” the Doctor breathed, tilting his head towards the other side of the box. “Got to draw its fire, give it a target.”

“How?”

“You know how sometimes I have really brilliant ideas?” he asked.

“Yes,” she moaned, rolling her eyes at his lack of modesty.

“Sorry,” he muttered, taking off. “Look at me I’m a target!”Another shot was fired at him and he dove behind a pillar.

“What is that?” Amy called.

“Cyber arm, arm of a Cyberman,” the Doctor informed her. “It’s looking for, well, fresh meat.”

“That better not mean us,” Amy growled. 

“I need to get behind it—could you draw out its fire?”

“What—like you did?” Amy snapped.

“You’ll be fine if you’re quick—it’s only got one arm. Literally!” he assured her with a smile and thumbs up.

With a breath, they took off in opposite directions, Amy screaming to draw attention to herself. The Doctor dove for the arm, quickly shutting it down with his screwdriver. He commanded for Amy to stay behind the Pandorica where she was, that the arm may still be a threat. 

Before he knew what happened, Amy was face down on the ground and the arm held let out an enormous electric current, sending him unconscious to the floor.

Rose had never heard the Doctor scream like that. The whole bed shook as he went through some kind of seizure. He fell silent almost immediately. 

“Doctor?” she nudged him, but there was no response. “Doctor, please wake up.” She grabbed her phone off the nightstand as she checked his pulse and other vital signs. “Mum? Mum—I—I know—Mum! Put Pete on the phone—Mum, now.” She waited as her mother woke her father up and handed him the phone almost too painfully slow.

“Rose?”

“I need you,” she said, unable to keep her voice from shaking. She couldn’t decide if it was adrenaline or fear. Maybe both. “Please.”

“What’s wrong, what is it?” She noted the change in his voice—clearer, more alert. Good.

“It’s the Doctor. Something’s wrong. He just, started screaming and—and shaking—I think he just had a seizure, I’m not sure,” Rose told him. “His vitals aren’t bad, from what I can tell, but his breathing is shallow.”

“Alright, calm down. I’ll be there in ten minutes at most.” Rose could hear her mother in the background trying to talk to him, asking what was going on.

“We can’t take him to a hospital, he’s still part Time Lord—”

“It’s alright. As much as he’ll hate it, we’ll take him to Torchwood.”

Rose let out a breath. “That’s probably best, they’ll have the tools to help figure out what’s been going on with him.” She heard a car start on his end.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Sounds like this is just the tip of the iceberg.” 

“It kind of is. A big tip,” she muttered. “He’s been having these dreams, of the other Doctor and the other universe. They’ve been…affecting him.” She placed her hand on the Doctor’s forehead. A slight fever, but his breathing had evened out.

“How is that possible?”

“We don’t know,” she whispered, taking the Doctor’s hand in hers. 

“There’s going to be an explosion in the future, at every point in time. And everything is cracking around it,” the Doctor was explaining to Rory.

“What was it? What exploded?”

The TARDIS. “Doesn’t matter,” he replied instead. “The cracks—get too close and you fall right out of the universe.”

“Get him out of the car and onto a stretcher,” Pete commanded a few white-coated doctors that were waiting for them at Torchwood.

“Be careful with them,” Rose added quickly. 

Pete flipped open his phone to check on the status of some things inside the building, while Rose monitored the progress of them transporting her Doctor to a stretcher. As soon as he was lying down, she was by his side, trying to coax him awake. But it was no good. This was one hell of a dream he was in.

The Pandorica let out an ear shattering noise. The Doctor shouted orders to River on the other side of his communicator, but he was cut off as the Pandorica finally opened, shedding a bright light into the cavern. 

“Ready to come out are you?”

A mass of his enemies approached him from behind, River was calling to him on the communicator. Chaos was exploding all around him. Plastic Romans took him by the arms and led him to the front of the Pandorica.

“The Pandorica is ready,” a Roman recited.

“You have been scanned. Assessed. Understood.” The familiar monotonous tone forced the Doctor to twist around in the arms of his captors only to confirm what he’d known. The Daleks. “Doctor.”

“Scanned?” the Doctor asked, his voice shaking. “Scanned by what, a box?” It was killing him, not knowing what this Pandorica held. .

“Your limits and capacities have been extrapolated,” a Cyberman responded.

“The Pandorica is ready,” a Sontaran announced.

“Ready for what?” the Doctor dared to ask. He had a feeling all his questions were about to be answered in the worst way possible. 

“Ready for you.”

The Pandorica was fully open now, its light no longer blinding, shielding the inside. The Doctor looked into it, the emptiness making his heart drop. He struggled against his restrainers, fear taking control of his body, unable to look away.

The plastic Romans began to lead him down a path of his enemies towards the chair that awaited him inside the Pandorica.

“No!”

Rose perked up at the sudden scream and spun around to see the Doctor thrashing about on the bed, upsetting the orderlies who were tending to him. “Pete!” she screamed, diving to keep the Doctor still. “Pete!”

Pete and several of the doctors raced in and sprung into action. As Pete, Rose, and another Doctor fought to keep the Doctor still, the orderlies and a couple other doctors raced about the bed, strapping the Doctor down into it.

“You lot, working together, an alliance,” he shouted, eyes open and unseeing.

“Doctor—” Rose tried as everyone backed away from the bed.

“How is that possible?” He paused and his voice turned to a whisper. “The cracks in the universe…all realities are threatened…all universes will be deleted.”

“What is he saying?” Pete asked.

“Shh,” Rose said. “Someone hand me some paper—write down what he’s saying.”

“What? And you’ve come to me for help?” he paused again. “From me? No, no, no—you’ve got it wrong! The cracks aren’t from me—not me! The TARDIS! And I’m not in the TARDIS, am I?”

“Here, a recorder,” a doctor offered, handing her a black box. “Just press the red button.”

“Please, listen to me!” the Doctor begged. His eyes were purely frightening to Rose. They were like looking at the open eyes of a dead man—they weren’t looking at anything in this world. “Total event collapse—every sun will supernova at every moment in history!” He started gasping, nearly crying in his outburst. “The whole universe will never have existed. Please, listen to me!”

“Close the Pandorica!”

“No, please, listen to me! The TARDIS is exploding right now and I’m the only one who can stop it!” the Doctor cried. Listen to me—!”

His plea was cut off as the door to the Pandorica shut with a loud, final clang, and everything went pitch black.

“No,” the Doctor breathed. “Please.”

‘It’s pointless,’ the Tenth Doctor sighed.

“Who said that?” the Doctor asked.

‘You can hear me?’ the Tenth was taken aback. The other Doctor had never been able to hear him before.

“You’re in my head,” he said, “I can hear you in my head. Who are you?”

‘I’m the Doctor. A previous regeneration. The Tenth.’

“Yes—and how do you know who I am then? And why is it only you? Is it because you were the most recent of my regenerations?” the Doctor asked, firing off one question after another but knowing that if he were, in fact, talking to The Doctor that it would be no issue.

‘I’m the human you that you left behind in the parallel universe,’ he answered simple. ‘I’ve been having dreams about you since you left.’

“How is that possible?”

‘I’ve been trying to find that exact answer for the past two months or so.’

“Has it really only been two months for you?” the Doctor asked, surprised.

‘More or less. What about you?’

“A while.”

‘Cryptic as ever. We’ll never get anywhere that way. I’m you—you can trust me,’ the Tenth told him.

“Well, it doesn’t appear as though I’m going anywhere for a while,” the Doctor sighed. “So you have these dreams—”

‘Right.’

“—About what exactly? What have you seen?” the Doctor tried to shift into a slightly less uncomfortable position in the metal chair he was strapped into. God help him the day he got an itch.

‘It started with your regeneration—’ he began.

“Which wasn’t too long after I’d left you and Rose.”

‘And then there was the space whale, the Daleks in the world war, helping River Song with the weeping angels—I won’t comment on your relationship there because it’s none of my business—the vampires in Venice, the time Amy had to choose realities, the journey to the center of the earth—’

“Clever—”

‘—Van Gogh, and living with Craig.’

“Oh, Craig! I’d almost forgotten how much you—I talked. And so fast—how did people ever understand a thing I was saying?”

‘Do I need to repeat myself?’

“No, no, but you’ve been getting dreams from all the most important points in my time stream.”

‘Think that has something to do with it?’

“Maybe.”

Suddenly it was like the darkness was becoming thinner. Like the black was becoming more of a gray. He could hear heavy stones grinding together, a deafening sound. Someone was opening the Pandorica. But who? Who could do that?

'Someone is coming to save you.'

"No, it's not possible," the Doctor muttered to himself.

'Why else would someone open the Pandorica?' the Tenth asked.

"But--"

'They've already trapped you in the universe's best prison--'

A sudden blinding light cut off whatever the Tenth was going to say and the Eleventh Doctor suddenly found his mind alone again.

The Doctor gasped and his eyes flew open. Loud shrieking machines cut through his ears and a bright light forced his eyes shut. There was sudden movement all around him and he couldn't focus. People were touching him, pulling at things attached to his arms, chest, his head.

"Heart rate and blood pressure are rising," someone announced loudly.

"There are too many people in this room," someone else stated.

The Doctor tried to push people away but found he had no strength in his arms. "No...stop..." He tried to open his eyes again, but the light was still painful. It was a complete opposite feeling from the blackness he had been in moments before. Was this still the Pandorica, he wondered. A small pain shot up his arm suddenly and a grunt escaped his lips.

"He pulled out the IV."

"Sedate him," a more familiar voice commanded firmly. He continued to struggle against the bindings with a little more energy.

"Ms. Tyler, if we sedate him he could slip back--"

"It's apparent three doctors can't handle a half conscious man that's tied to a bed," she snapped, "so I suggest you sedate him before anyone gets hurt." 

"Rose," the Doctor muttered, trying to find her with his bound hands.

Fingers slipped into his. "I'm here." Another hand found his cheek. "Calm down, you're fine. You're at Torchwood." Somehow that gave him no comfort at all.

"Rose," he tried to protest, but something, an exhaustion, hit him like a ton of bricks.

"Sleep, Doctor," Rose whispered.


	5. Pandorica Part 5

“How did you do that?” the Doctor breathed as his mechanical bindings opened. Rory stood, completely shocked, in front of him, outside the Pandorica.

“You gave me this,” he said, holding up a sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor pulled out his own, equally shocked. “No I didn’t.”

“You did,” Rory insisted and the Doctor left the Pandorica. “Look at it.”

Hesitantly, the Doctor poked Rory’s screwdriver with his own, a small explosion popping through the air. “Temporal energy, same screwdriver, different points in its own timestream, which means it was me who gave it to you, me from the future.” He paused and seemed to get excited for a second. “I’ve got a future! That’s nice.”His eyes traveled over Rory’s shoulder. “That’s not.”

The Doctor studied the statue-like echoes of his one-time enemies. A short but complex explanation left Rory confused and the Doctor with diminishing hope.

He stopped his pacing and looked at Rory. “Amy—where’s Amy?”

Without a word, Rory turned on his heal and led the Doctor to where he’d left Amy’s body. The Doctor immediately sprung into action, mind reeling to find a way to save his best friend, while Rory paced behind him, trying to convince the Doctor that he wasn’t just some toy soldier created from a memory.

“I’m Rory!” he insisted.

“That’s software talking,” the Doctor mumbled, distracted by his screwdriver.

“Can you help her?” Rory pleaded. “Is there anything you can do?”

“Probably,” the Doctor shrugged. “If I had the time.”

“The time?” Rory growled.

“All of creation has just been wiped from the sky. Do you know how many lives now never happened? All the people who never lived? Your girlfriend isn’t more important than the whole universe.”

Unable to take it, Rory grabbed the Doctor by the shoulder, spun him around, and decked him. The Doctor fell to the ground like a rock.

“She is to me!” Rory yelled.

The Doctor woke with a gasp, his jaw throbbing. He went to rub it, to attempt to ease the pain, and found his arms bound to the bed he was lying on. Beeping surrounded him as he felt his own heart begin to pound in his chest, faster. An oxygen mask was attached to his face, which he desperately wanted gone.

He looked around at the empty room and lay still, waiting. The erratic beeping didn’t calm, but he knew someone heard it. He knew someone would come. He took the time to assess his little situation. He knew he was no longer in the Pandorica—but was he awake? If he was, it sure looked a lot like Torchwood and he wasn’t sure which place he preferred the least.

The door opened and a disheveled looking Pete and a nameless doctor rushed in. Pete reached over and pulled the mask off his face while the doctor shut down the machine’s screeching.

“Where’s Rose?” the Doctor asked, not liking this one bit. The Torchwood theory seemed to solidify the minute Pete walked in the room.

“On her way,” Pete said with a smile that did little to comfort him. But he wasn’t looking for comfort, he was looking for answers.

“Why am I tied down to a bed in the middle of Torchwood?” he demanded, pulling at the cuffs for emphasis. Last he remembered he was in bed at his and Rose’s apartment.

“It was for your own protection,” the doctor began. “We need to run some tests—”

Pete held up his hand and the doctor’s words died on his lips. “Doctor, we won’t do anything to you unless we have your consent.” He leaned across the bed and began to unbuckle the cuffs. “Rose has been careful in what she lets us do. But we only want to help.”

Slightly grateful, the Doctor sat up and rubbed his jaw as soon as his hands were free. “Thank you,” he mumbled, shooting a glance behind him at the monitors. Simple heart rate, IV, blood pressure things. Basic monitoring. Other than IV fluids, there was nothing he couldn’t identify.

“Where is she? How far away?” he asked, a little less angry and demanding.

“Should be here any second now,” he told him. “Your heart rate monitor is linked to her phone.”

“Are you feeling better?” Pete asked carefully.

The Doctor didn’t answer for a second. He wasn’t sure if he even knew the answer. He sure as hell had no idea what was going on still. “It’s not over yet,” was all he said.

The Doctor could hear someone racing down the hallway towards what he assumed was his room. A frantic blond flew into the doorway and looked around. She said nothing, just grinned through her tears when she saw him and closed the distance between them as fast as she could. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder.

“You’re ok,” she chanted.

“Of course I’m ok,” he chuckled into her hair. “I’m the Doctor.”

She pulled back and gave him a strange look, then glanced over her shoulder at Pete and the doctor. “Has no one told you yet?”

“Told me what?” he asked as slowly and evenly as he could.

She took his face in her hands. “You’ve been in a coma for almost three weeks now. You woke up for a few minutes the other day, but other than that, nothing since you went to bed that night.”

He just stared at her for a minute and she wasn’t sure he heard her. But the look in his eye told her that he had, in fact, heard her and was, in fact, thinking something big.

“How long were we in the Pandorica?” he muttered to himself, running a hand through his hair.

“What?” Rose’s eyebrows pulled together.

The Doctor just took a slow breath and gave her a small smile. “It’s a very, very long story—well when I say long story it’s not really my story. It’s the Doctor’s—the other Doctor. In the dreams he’s in trouble—was. He’s not now, or then. I don’t know. I’m not sure if our timelines are lined up. Maybe all of this already happened to him and—”

“Doctor,” Rose said loudly. “Slow down.”

“He said the same thing,” the Doctor muttered. “Said I talked too fast.”

“Who said that?” Pete asked. Upon seeing the Doctor’s eyes flick over to the doctor, who had taken the time to adjust the IV stand, motioned for him to leave.

“The other Doctor,” he replied when the door to his room was shut.

“Wait,” Rose held up a hand. “You talked to him?”

“Yeah, when he was trapped in the Pandorica.”

Silence filled the room.

“Start from the beginning,” Rose suggested.


	6. Chapter 6

Rose walked into the room balancing two trays of food in her arms. She shut the door with her foot and proceeded to the bed, handing off one of the trays to the Doctor. He’d explained as much as he could remember about the dream to them, which had taken a lot longer than he thought. Pete had excused himself just as Rose had left to find food for them.

“So you don’t think it’s over yet?” Rose asked, breaking the silence. She sat facing him from the foot of the bed. Their knees were touching beneath the small hospital food table between them. Every little twitch that knocked his knees into hers sent pleasure through her body. He was awake and moving on his own.

He chewed carefully, eyes cast downward, away from her. “I know it’s not over yet. Amy’s dead and the universes are collapsing in on itself.” Something dawned on him then and he nearly dropped his fork.

“What?” she asked, fork paused halfway to her mouth. “What is it?”

“If all of that is really happening, we should be seeing it happen, too—the side effects so to speak.”

“The cracks?”

“Not just the cracks,” he breathed, jumping out of the bed. He stumbled a bit, but caught himself on the windowsill. “The stars. The stars were going out.”

“Stars?” Rose asked, joining him at the window. She looked out at the flat blackness of the sky.

“Yes, the stars,” he muttered in disbelief. They were all already gone. “Nothing I can do from here.” He turned and leaned against the windowsill, eyes shut tight, one hand to his temples.

“What do you think is gonna happen?” Rose asked, sitting back down to finish her meal. The Doctor looked up at her. 

“The disappearances of the stars aren’t phasing her one bit—must be another side effect. But why is it affecting us? Why here, too? Travel between universes was simpler when there were more Time Lords.” He pushed off the wall and began to pace. “Welll, when I say simpler I mean it still wasn’t easy, but there are no other Time Lords—” He froze in realization.

“Doctor?” Rose noticed his verbal stumble, her full attention now on him.

“Did you ask me something?” he asked her suddenly, covering up his mishap and hoping she brushed it off.

She narrowed her eyes at him and promised herself to drill him when she knew he was feeling better. “I asked what you think will happen to the Doctor next.”

The Doctor shut his eyes and tried to remember what had happened last. The Doctor began to pace again. The lights in the room were making his headache escalate, even through tightly lidded eyes. 

Amy was dead—Rory was more than a little pissed off. If what the Doctor had learned about the Pandorica was right, all the Doctor would have to do would be put Amy in the Pandorica, hope some archeologists found it, wait a couple thousand years, and have a younger Amy visit it. The Pandorica would then read her DNA and bring her back to life, so to speak. What then? The Doctor wouldn’t just wait two thousand—River’s Vortex Manipulator. Brilliant. 

The Doctor’s pacing halted. “The Daleks…?”

Rose turned rigid and watched the Doctor carefully. “What?”

The Doctor didn’t answer though, he jolted, mouth dropping into a silent scream. He fell back against the window, legs giving out. Rose dove from the bed and fought to keep him upright.

She began to call to him, but knew it was useless when she saw the dark red liquid blossoming across his t-shirt. “Pete!” she called instead. “Pete! Anyone!” She was torn between staying there with him and tearing ass through the halls of Torchwood in search of her father and the doctors.

She didn’t need to, though, when a female doctor and security guard burst into the room. “What’s wrong?” the doctor asked as the guard wordlessly dropped to the floor next to her.

“I—I don’t know, he was just pacing, talking to me. All of a sudden he collapsed and started bleeding,” Rose explained.

“Get him back to the bed,” the doctor ordered. The security guard nodded and lifted the thin man with ease. Rose moved out of the way and made quick work of cleaning up their dinner mess.

“Where’s Pete?” Rose asked.

“He ran home for a minute—something about Tony,” the guard told her before leaving. “I’ll go and fetch the others.”

“Right,” the doctor muttered, cutting off the Doctor’s shirt. “Can you hand me some gauze?” She gestured to a drawer next to the door with her free hand. Rose nodded and retrieved a box. When she turned back to the doctor and her Doctor, she froze next to the bed. “What is going on?”

“I have no idea,” Rose murmured. “Is that…” her hand drifted towards the wound on the Doctor’s abdomen. “Is that a burn?”

“Third degree,” the doctor breathed. “But how—”

“Stay with him, Dr…”

“Amell,” she replied.

“Dr. Amell. Please, stay here—I’m gonna go call Pete.”

“Wait, answer me a few questions, please,” she asked, catching Rose by the sleeve. “What was he doing when this happened—exactly?”

Rose swallowed and nodded, thankful they weren’t questions she was expecting—DNA questions. “He was pacing. We were talking.”

Dr. Amell applied some sort of topical ointment the wound. “What were you guys talking about—if you don’t mind my asking.”

“Nothing personal,” Rose muttered. “We were talking about his dreams—but he wasn’t dreaming. He was just walking around, thinking with his eyes shut. He wasn’t asleep.”

Dr. Amell’s eyes snapped up to meet Rose’s. “A person doesn’t need to be asleep to dream.”

“You mean daydreaming?” Dr. Amell only lifted an eyebrow and proceeded to dress the Doctor’s wound. “I’m gonna go call Pete,” Rose muttered, mind racing too fast to think straight anymore.

“Doctor!” 

Voices echoed through the halls of the museum, but the Doctor couldn’t find the strength to lift his head let along call out to them. He heard them getting closer and prayed they wouldn’t try to stop him.

“Why did he tell us he was dead?” Rory demanded.

Hands lifted his head up and cupped his face.

“We were a diversion,” Amy concluded.”As long as the Dalek was chasing us, he could work down here.”

“Doctor,” River breathed, closed to him. Right in front of him. “Can you hear me? What were you doing?”

Light flickered through the museum and a low rumble began to shake the building.

“What’s happening?”

“Reality’s collapsing,” River mumbled, stepping out of the Pandorica.”It’s speeding up. Time is running out.” She turned back to the man in the box. “Doctor, what were you doing? Tell us?” She shook him, frantically trying to understand the brilliant man’s moves.”Doctor!”

The Doctor took a shuddering breath and pooled all his energy to open his eyes and look at the frantic, scared woman before him. “Big…bang…two,” he whispered.

“The big bang?” Rory said. “It’s the beginning of the universe, right?”

“What and Big Bang Two is the bang that brings us back?” Amy snapped. “Is that what you mean?”

“Oh,” River gasped, the Doctor’s plan clicking together in her head.

“What?” Amy asked, taking a step forward in anticipation.

River spun around, eyes wide in wonder. “The TARDIS is still burning. It’s exploding at every point in history. If you threw the Pandorica into the explosion right into the heart of the fire—”

“Then what?” 

“Then let there be light,” River explained with a shake of her head and a shrug. “The light from the Pandorica would explode everywhere at once.” She spun back to the Doctor. “Just like he said.”

“And that would work,” Amy pleaded. “That would bring everything back?”

“A restoration field powered by an exploding TARDIS happening at every moment in history,” River breathed. The Doctor could feel his energy wavering. River’s voice fading slowly. “Oh, that’s brilliant. It might even…” And then she was gone.

‘Can you hear me?’

You’re inside my head again, the Doctor thought, unable to speak.

‘It seems your little run-in with the Dalek has led to some unforeseen effects on my end.’

Where are you? The Doctor demanded.

‘In the other dimension, where you left me. But to be more specific, I’m lying in a medical bed in the middle of Torchwood. Thanks for that, by the way.’

How is that my fault? he demanded. What is going on over there?

‘I haven’t come to a definitive conclusion, but the problems you’re having over there are effecting us, too. Our stars are gone, but the people are still here.’

And how does that put you in Torchwood?

‘That I have a how but not a why. When you get hurt there, I feel it here. You get trapped in the Pandorica, I slip into a three-week coma.’

I’ll bet Rose was pleased with that one, he thought with sarcasm.

‘Oh, thrilled. But most recent, when you got hit by the Dalek—well, I just know I ended up back here.’

In my mind, the Doctor finished. But—

‘How? Why?’ The Doctor could almost see his tenth incarnation grinning. ‘Well, Doctor, I’m so glad you asked.’


End file.
